Sleep Chronotypes: What’s Yours? When someone asks what type of person you are with regard to being your best self in the morning or at night, the automatic response is like the toss of a coin, two-sided and either-or in response: early bird or night owl. According to a 2019 study, however, the variety in circadian rhythm fluctuation across different persons and when they feel sleepy within a 24-hour period actually exhibits two other sleep personality-types, or chronotypes, in addition to the morning and the evening: the afternoon and the napper. Cortisol is a wakefulness hormone, while melatonin is a canceller of that effect so that we can sleep. Cortisol production promoted by daylight and melatonin by darkness, they nevertheless fluctuate besides such stimulus throughout each day – and that’s what determines a sleep chronotype, outside of and in addition to genetic cause, the age factor, and one’s environment. The pandemic and the necessary WFH lifestyle might have changed our sleep patterns somewhat, but essentially which type are you?
Early Bird (The Morning Type)
Night Owl (The Evening Type)
You wake before the alarm, never sleep in on weekends, and can quite happily work away from first light. Physically, this means your cortisol release happens earlier than average in a 24hour period. However, by extension, it also means your melatonin is released earlier in the evening and so you’re known for going to bed relatively early.
You love that snooze button, don’t you? Not one for meaningful conversation of a morning, your true energy sparkles as the sun dips once more beneath the horizon’s edge. Inversely to early birds, your cortisol is being released far later than most folk, while your melatonin release stage might not occur before midnight’s struck and most others had hit the sack long ago (or turned into pumpkins).
The Afternoon Type
The Napper Type
Most alert in the afternoon, mornings aren’t particularly your favourite part of the day, but from 5pm onward you’re feeling tired again. Very much a daytime person, then, you pretty much suit the modern work schedule and couldn’t possibly imagine drafting documents pre-dawn, nor slogging through preparatory work for tomorrow’s meeting after supper. And that’s okay: you do you.
You’re a bit of enigma: perky as an early bird in the mornings, and content to keep up with the night owls for as long as you can come the night, the napper can do what they do in seeming Energiser-bunny style because between roughly 2pm and 3pm they steal a bit of shuteye to recharge (we won’t tell if you don’t). However, the body battery boost won’t last long after 10pm.
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